When my application is launched, I would like to retrieve the google play account of user which was used to download the app. With that e-mail id, I would bind the user to the device.
Can anyone pls let me know how to retrieve the e-mail which was used to download the app?
Thanks in advance :)
All Google accounts are stored on the device; just read that, I've seen permissions to do it, but I haven't done the code myself. After that, send the data to your DB along with the UUID and store them. Word of warning though...this method is not very popular with customers as they find it too restrictive. You have to allow for multiple devices with the same account on it. Storing customer information must be encrypted(REQUIRED BY LAW).
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I am developing an SDK which multiple applications will use. This SDK should login to the user's account and will provide the application with server interaction works. My problem is that I want to share this user's account between these applications. So there should be a mechanism in which applications will first look up the account if it exists, they will use it, if not, they will create it. But I am having technical challenges.
I looked up android's custom accounts so that the account credentials could be stored there. But I am not sure if it is possible there. First, is it possible to see if an account under a certain type exists? Second, is it possible for an application to use an account which another application created? For example, google games is doing exactly this functionality. Any game can login with user's google game account. But I need to do this without installing a third-party service on user's device.
Generally, if you have anything helpful to solve this situation, it is much appreciated.
If you looking for a solution on the device you can use a content provider to share data between the two apps.
After digging deep in the explained situation, I got my answer
First, yes it is possible to see if there exist an account under an specific name. This name can be different from the application's URI.
Second, it is possible to use an account which another application has been created.
So in the SDK, I can first lookup a contracted account name which there will be an stored token. If it exists, the SDK will store it in the shared preferences. If it does not exist, the SDK will create the token using the user's credentials. This way, other applications can use this account and if the application which created the account has been uninstalled, the next application which runs, will recreate the token in accounts from its shared preferences.
Is there a way how to get details of users who downloaded my android app from Google Play store? I'd need for example email address, phone number or at least phone id...
Thank you.
Yes you can.
For that you need to write in your code to get the Phone IMIE No, or any specific information you need and then send those to your server and save them in your any specific Activity class when the user first time open your App. This could be done programatically before the app is sent to the play store.
Scenario
The user get only the first time free credits in the app. After that we want to do fraud prevention. We need to check if the user and/or the device have not installed the application before.
We can accept the risk of a factory reset or rooted devices
What I tried already
Listen to Intent.ACTION_PACKAGE_FIRST_LAUNCH. After reading I understand that this event is only send to the Play store and can't be used in any other app.
Check the application package info for the field "firstInstallTime", this is reset when the user removed the application and do a install.
Android Backup Service, but the user can stop the backup and reset data, so this is at no use.
App licensing looks like a promise solution to detect if the user have already installed the app. But with limitations the following is described: "You can implement licensing controls for a free app, but only if you're using the service to provide APK expansion files." Do we need to make a small APK expension file, just to verify the license?"
make a fingerprint of the mac address, imei, android id and some other stuff. But would this make the scans of Google play violating? I don't use it for advertising, but i'm afraid they think we violate the google play policy.
how you can help me
Can you help me to choose a good direction to solve this issue and maybe give some better methods to do this verification.
Factory reset, second-hand phones and users with multiple devices will be your main problems.
The only way to uniquely identify a user is an authentication through login/password or OpenId account.
Hey there if you are managing user information at the your server than what you can do is take the IMEI number of the device and send it to your server. It will record the information of the user. Now if he/she uninstall and install app again your app will again send IMEI number at server now you can check the IMEI already present or not, If present then user have already installed your application, more over you can manage same thing from the login ID, but that can be faked by the user. More over it will not violate any thing. User can see while installing in the permissions that your app will get the system information.
I develop mobile cross-platform games (for iOS,Android and WP).
I want to know the email or the phone number of the people who bought my app from the iOS,Android or WP store, for using these informations for authentication purpose.
Waiting for your valuable comments and sugessions
Thanks.
You don't have that information unless people authorize you or give it to you.
Under no circumstances should you be able to get the information of the people who are buying your apps unless they opt into it and it’s made crystal clear to them that you are getting this information.
This was in the news last year because you shouldn't have that data.
This counts for iOS and Android.
options
Ask users for their personal information in the app and send it to
your servers.
Make your app need registration and login ( This is very strict on iOS, make sure you have some kind of offerable service which actually need registration)
You can link their personal information with device numbers, but these are spoofable on rooted and jailbroken devices
To get the device information on android:
You want to call android.telephony.TelephonyManager.getDeviceId().
This will return whatever string uniquely identifies the device (IMEI on GSM, MEID for CDMA).
You'll need the
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE" />
permission to do this.
On iOS look at this answer: How to get IMEI on iPhone?
I can only speak for iOS:
You can't get email address nor phone number using iOS APIs. If you want this, you need to ask the user yourself.
Then you'd need a way to verify them:
Email by sending a link they need to click.
Phone number by sending the user an SMS (with link they need to click, or code they need to type in UI), or by calling them and asking them to dial/DTMF a code they see in the app, or on the app enter a code they hear.
If you want to keep users apart, without needing any info from them:
Have a non-consumable in-app payment item (which you could call 'account' for example). Since these items can only be bought once per user, and because Apple's in-app purchase receipt contains a unique ID, you can use this as a user identifier. (If this does not make sense, you need to read Apple's documentation about in-app purchases.)
If you are asking the user for mail/no then just store temperorly and use webservice to retrive in background
If you want the details without knowing to user Use analytics and catch maild id's of user (flurry , google analytics)
I dont think this is possible currently. The playstore console displays information like number of download, carriers, devices, etc. You may want to consider building in those features and requesting the info from the user via the valid permissions. Aside there is an unofficial playstore API that lets you pull data viz. app info, comments, etc. You can find it here
Following are my problems:-
Is it possible to get the list of applications that a user has installed, against their google account through Google Play, programmatically through the use of any api?. Please note that I am not asking about the list of apps currently installed in the device, but ones that have at some point been installed.
I need a solution to the above as I am thinking of a scenario in my app, which is:
I want to give my app to the user for free during the first three months, after three months if user uninstalls the app and then installs it again I want to detect through any api (from Google Play) that the user has installed the app a second time (and should not get any free usage). Please note that I don't want to use any web service to store the account id & device id of the user at my side.
For option 2, you can create a file on the SD card. This will remain there when the user uninstalls/installs. But the user can always delete your special file. Unless you do something at your side, you are never sure if the user already used your app before.
To be completely sure, store it online:
You will need to have a very simple database which holds a list of device_id that installed your app.
Further more a webpage which fills this database.
In your app you download/open this webpage which the webpage will fill the DB.
App > WebClient (or other) which opens http://www.example.com/registerDevice.php?device_id=. The php site fills the db.
You app will need to check the database if the current device already has installed this app inorder to work/not work. You can do this via the same php and check the response. You could for example return 'ok' or 'not ok' or something else.
The simplest method is to get the account of the user the first time he/she runs the app, and send that detail over to you.
How this is can be done is well-documented over here: How to get the Android device's primary e-mail address
You will have to add another line of code to check back to the database at the first start of the app.
EDIT: For a non-web solution, simply add a timer to the start of your app:
schedule(TimerTask task, Date when)
the task should be adding a token AFTER the period of time you wish to give, to the phone's memory with the user's account details for authentication (see first solution on getting the account details)
Finally, as above, add a check-back to the phone's memory for that particular file to see if the user has used the app before.
The problem with any type of authentication that is based on the phone's memory is that people can easily remove the token, if they can find it, and reuse the app again.
Try this device specific implementation:
PackageManager packageManager = getContext().getPackageManager();
List<ApplicationInfo> applications = packageManager.getInstalledApplications(
PackageManger.GET_UNINSTALLED_PACKAGES);
// retrieves some information about all applications (even uninstalled ones)
// which have data directories
Of course this method won't work if user replaces the device. But you don't need to use any web service.
You can use this by keeping a database of hashed device id and users google id on a 3rd party server.
Also see http://android-developers.blogspot.de/2011/03/identifying-app-installations.html